Derek Neal (JPE 2004) used the NLSY79 to show that the observed median log wage gap between young white and young black women in 1990 underestimated the true, selection-corrected gap, i.e., the gap we would have expected to see had all of these women been employed in 1990. In this paper, we use...

Women typically earn less than men. The reasons are not fully understood. Previous studies argue that this may be because (i) women 'don't ask' and (ii) the reason they fail to ask is out of concern for the quality of their relationships at work. This account is difficult to assess with standard...

This paper analyzes the consequences of the spacing of births for women's subsequent labor income and wages. Spacing births in longer intervals may allow women to re-enter the labor market between childbearing events, thereby avoiding expanded work interruptions and, in turn, reducing the...

This paper studies the causal effect of the timing of first birth on highly educated women's career outcomes using exogenous variation in first birth timing induced by the occurrence of pregnancy loss before first birth. Contrasting previous findings, my results suggest that a one-year delay has...